Writing as Occupation 2

A swath of scanned texts from a recent residency – with David Stent and Neil Chapman – at the O3 Gallery in Oxford, as part of the Audiograft festival, have been made available online.

“The second incarnation of Writing as Occupation takes place during the Audiograft Festival in Oxford, with writers occupying the lower floor of the O3 Gallery, located within the site of Oxford castle and former prison. The space is to be occupied during ‘work hours’, ostensibly between 9am and 5pm, but we always prepare for the prospect of overtime, zero hours, flexitime, off-site & out-of-hours, lock-ins and so on. Building upon the concerns of Writing as Occupation 1, incumbent writers will not live in the space nor attempt to barricade themselves in, yet their occupation of writing will be explored as a daily task open to public view and interaction. A series of writing stations will be established involving technologies ranging from simple pen and paper, manual and electric typewriters, and computers linked up to printers. The residency / performance will not only be implicitly concerned with notions of occupation, labour and time but also the act of writing itself, especially in terms of the physical demands of the event but also in relation to the materiality of writing as the mass of material generated by the writers builds up within the space. In the context of the Audiograft, the occupation will be supported by a number of overlapping and interrupting audio resources, as well as a bespoke library of material deposited in the space: resources will range from public radio broadcasts, specific recordings, readings from participants and so on. The three-day performance will culminate in a live event, bringing together strands that have emerged through the writing process over the course of the four days.”